Faithin Omaha eBook Collection

Download or read book Labor and Product Market Deregulation: Partial, Sequential, or Simultaneous Reform? written by Helge Berger and published by INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND. This book was released on 2005-12-01 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study explores the effects of labor and product market deregulation on employment growth. Our empirical results, based on an OECD country panel from 1990-2004, suggest that lower levels of product and labor market regulation foster employment growth, including through sizable interaction effects. Based on these findings, the paper develops a theoretical framework for evaluating deregulation strategies in the presence of reform costs. Optimal deregulation takes various forms depending on the deregulation costs, the strength of reform interactions, and the perspective of the policymaker. Unless deregulation costs are very asymmetric across markets, optimal deregulation requires some form of coordination.